More than anything else, when a person walks into the clinic after being in a car wreck, their main complaint is neck pain. This makes perfectly good sense when you consider that your head is about 10 to 15% of your body weight and it is not strapped to the seat like your body. No matter which direction an impact comes from, the head is going to be jerked back and forth in that direction, stretching, straining and possibly tearing the tissues of your neck.
These injuries are nothing to joke about and they are highly complex. There is no "simple" strain when it comes to your neck. Besides the bones of your neck, there are ligaments (seven different ones at each of the seven segments of your neck), joint capsules (highly innervated and thus potentially very painful), para-spinal muscles, spinal nerves and nerves going out to your arms in between each bone, and an intervertebral disc between each bone of the neck which can be damaged or torn resulting in bulging or herniation outward, possibly putting pressure on nerves and even your spinal cord. Simple? I think not.
Besides neck pain, these neck injuries can cause headaches, dizziness, neck stiffness, pain in the upper back and shoulders as well as numbness and tingling in the hands and fingers. Muscle spasms and contractions can extend from the base of the head down to the mid-back and between the shoulder blades.
The doctor will need to examine your neck, possibly take some x-rays to rule out things like bone fractures, bone pathologies, dislocations, and anything else which might be there which could influence or complicate the injury. Sometimes, an MRI is needed to see those structures of the neck which do not show up on x-ray. Treatment usually begins with passive therapies, neck manipulations, as well as exercises and stretches to gradually relax the muscle spasms, restore normal motion and hopefully reduce the formation of scar tissue in the injured tissues and promote healing.
Depending upon the patient's age and medical history, treatment can run from as little as a couple of weeks to a few months. One important thing, the sooner you get to the doctor, the easier it will be to treat your injured neck.
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